Influential appellate advocate – Jerome Dobson

When Missouri employment law cases started to shift from federal to state courts in the early 2000s, Jerome Dobson and his firm saw an opportunity to help shape caselaw in a largely untested arena.

Last year, Dobson scored two major victories for fired workers, in a pair of cases that the Missouri Supreme Court decided on the same day: Fleshner v. Pepose Vision Institute and Keveney v. Missouri Military Academy.

In Fleshner, the court expressly adopted an exception to the employment-at-will doctrine for discharge in violation of public policy. While an appeals court had made such an exception earlier, the Supreme Court hadn’t yet ruled squarely on the issue. Generally, employers can fire at-will workers for any reason, or none at all.

And while the high court’s recognition of that exception alone was gratifying, Dobson says, the bigger impact on attorneys’ handling and resolving of cases came from the other point the court made in that ruling. The court also held that a worker’s protected action, such as whistle-blowing or refusing to break the law, need only be a contributing factor in a firing, rather than its exclusive cause. That finding “could protect potentially every employee in the state of Missouri,” says Dobson, a partner with Dobson, Goldberg, Berns & Rich in St. Louis.

In Fleshner, an employee was fired the day after she told her employer she was called at home by a federal labor investigator looking into the business’s overtime pay practices.

Dobson says Fleshner was a good test cause on causation, because the woman’s employer was already considering a layoff for financial reasons, but then her conversation with the investigator pushed Pepose Vision to fire her.

In Keveney, the court expanded the public-policy exception to cover contract employees. In the past, contract employees could only sue for breach of contract. Because of the Keveney decision, an employer now also may face a wrongful-discharge claim, which can include punitive damages.

In Keveney, a teacher was fired after he reported a student’s bruises to his employer, and the employer refused to report the information to the Division of Family Services as required.

After the Supreme Court rulings in his clients’ favor, Dobson says, both cases reached confidential settlements.

Going forward, Dobson says he will fight to keep business interests from persuading the Legislature to change the law and undo the impact of those rulings. Employment lawyers on both sides and legislators expect workplace law to be a key focus in this year’s legislative session. Business groups say a slew of court rulings dating back several years have hurt the state’s business climate and driven up insurance and litigation costs.

Dobson hopes to line up workers to share their stories with lawmakers, saying they make a greater impact than attorneys testifying about the importance of whistle-blower or anti-discrimination protections.

“Employees who blow the whistle, employees who refuse to engage in conduct they believe is illegal, take a tremendous risk,” he says. “Those who lose their jobs because of it really should have the protection of the courts of the state of Missouri.”